November 7, 2007

Our Town/ Our Teachers: Moving Music Education onto the Web


Carolyn Castellano, Brookline High School’s Concert and Jazz Band director, wished she had more time to collaborate with her students — and that they had more time to collaborate with each other — on original music. The time spent in the classroom just wasn’t enough. One day, she had an inspiration: What if class could “continue outside the walls of the classroom?”
She approached artist and Web designer Philippe Lejeune, and creativehighschoolmusic.net was born. With a grant from the Brookline Education Foundation, Castellano and Lejeune transformed an ordinary Web site into an interactive online classroom where students can talk with each other, watch instrumental music lessons and view actual classroom footage of musical arrangements in the process of being created. Castellano talks more about creativehighschoolmusic.net.


What do visitors see when they enter creativehighschoolmusic.net?
Castellano: On the site, you can listen to our songs, many of which are original compositions. Our jazz band concerts are archived on the site. There are podcasts showing discussions about different subjects, such as the future of CDs.


Aside from the need for more instructional time, what motivated you to create a Web site for student musicians?
Castellano: Kids grow up in a multimedia world. It’s a cross-media approach, so to be able to present the class in that way, you can watch it, listen to it, etc. I believe that students get an epiphany by watching themselves rather than having someone else tell them. I say, “Why don’t you go back and watch what you were doing?” They come to realizations on their own.

How do students use the blog on your site?
Castellano: Blogging allows students to go back after the class is over, formulate their thoughts and communicate with each other. They are required to blog two times a week so I know that they’re thinking about what’s going on in the classroom. I moderate the blog; only students can comment.


What is the Ellington Project, and what can visitors learn from this area of the site?
Castellano: The Ellington Project shows how we work on music in the classroom, which is useful for other educators. If you look at the video, we sit in a circle and it’s mostly the students talking. They can go back at night and critique it and come back the next day and give feedback.


There is also video of students presenting instrumental music lessons. How do you help high school students to present an effective lesson, and why do you have them teach?
Castellano: I ask them what types of things they wish they knew when they were in seventh or eighth grade that they’d like to do a five-minute lesson on. I have them teach because having to express to others something that you know intrinsically is a valuable experience. They also do their own arrangements, and they teach their arrangements to their peers. The lessons also are a way of helping up-and-coming musicians from the elementary school [who log on to the site] to work on some of the basics of their instruments.


How is music education for this generation different than it was for other generations?
Castellano: The Web-based stuff is very aural. A formally trained musician learns notes, but the informal musicians are listening to music and then trying to figure out how to play it. A lot of my students are like that.
Music is not just theory, it’s aural: It’s texture, and hearing, and organizing sounds. When you use music software, you’re problem-solving as you’re organizing sounds. We learn theory by writing songs.


What challenges does the new technology present for music educators?
Castellano: Once you get on the Web, how do you use it in your pedagogy? What’s the value of it for instruction? There can’t be a handbook for it because the technology keeps changing. We have to constantly be evaluating. We have to change the way we are thinking about music education because this is how musicians are promoting themselves: It’s Web-based, with a Web page and a presence on MySpace and YouTube.

What are your future plans for the site?
Castellano: We’re still working on making the site more interactive. Right now, you can record a song directly onto the Web page, up to two minutes, and everyone can listen to it. We’d like to use the Web page to collaborate on music compositions online. This is largely untapped.